Guardians of Peace hacking organization has unfinished business

The hacking organization that took credit for infiltrating Sony Pictures Entertainment and stealing 10TB worth of data has also threatened at least one news media organization, according to an FBI bulletin that's making the rounds in cyberspace. Known as the Guardians of Peace, or GOP, the group of hackers proved a major headache for Sony, who's antics appear to have been motivated by The Interview, a comedy involving an assassination attempt against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Hacker group claims to be in possession of Sony's "secrets"

What secrets might Sony Pictures be hiding? We don't know the answer to that, but apparently a hacker group does, or at least is claiming that to be the case. Sony Pictures suffered a security breach by a hacker group called #GOP, which forced employees to shut down their systems and stay off the movie studio's network. The hackers say they're in possession of internal data, including the company's "secrets."

One of the biggest breaches in recent times

A cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase & Co., the largest bank in the U.S., impacted around 76 million homes and 7 million small businesses, the company revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. Compromised data includes user contact information, including names, addresses ,phone numbers, email addresses, and internal JPMorgan information relating to 83 million users.

Company tries to thwart cheat developers by making it financially unfeasible

In response to a Reddit thread claiming that the Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) program records users’ browsing history, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell replied that it isn’t the case. Newell broached the subject on his own Reddit thread to provide an explanation of how VAC works in order to refute these claims.

Young activists fess up to series of hacker attacks.

Ryan Ackroyd, a 26-year-old from South Yorkshire, pleaded guilty to a single count of a computer-related hacking charge, according to a report in U.K.'s The Guardian newspaper. Ackroyd admitted in court to being involved with hactivist organization Lulz Security, otherwise known as LulzSec, and to plotting a series of attacks on websites such as 20th Century Fox, Sony, Nintendo, News International, Arizona state police in the U.S., and other targets.

Hacking group takes credit for attack on U.S. Department of Justice's website.

The hactivist organization known as Anonymous is claiming it's the one responsible for infiltrating the U.S. Department of Justice's Sentencing Commission website (www.ussc.gov) over the weekend. This latest attack was in retaliation to the government's attempt to prosecute Aaron Swartz for illegally downloading millions of academic journals from JSTOR, an online archive and journal distribution service.

Hactivist group promises more shenanigans in 2013.

If you thought the hactivist group known as Anonymous would fade from view in the New Year, think again. Anonymous posted a message making it clear it intends to keep on hacking, telling the world, "We are still here...Expect us." Of course, it just wouldn't be an anonymous post without some derogatory language, so keep that in mind before clicking through to the organization's website for the full message.

Though it's been relatively quiet lately, the high profile hacking organization known as Lulz Security (LulzSec) spent much of last summer stirring up trouble on the Internet, often times at the expense of innocent users who happened to be customers of whichever organization the cyber scoundrels were targeting. The FBI hasn't forgotten about all the illegal activity that took place, and related to the infamous Sony breach, federal authorities arrested a second suspected LulzSec member in the U.S.

Blizzard Entertainment, the company behind the insanely popular World of Warcraft franchise and, more recently, Diablo III, confirmed that it's Battle.net game service suffered a security breach that compromised certain user data. The full extent of the hack attack is still unknown, but at this stage, Blizzard doesn't believe that any financial data was lifted, including credit card info, billing addresses, or real names.

Misery loves company, though that probably won't come as much consolation to social networking site LinkedIn, which is now joined by at least two other sites that suffered a serious security breach at the hands of the same band of hackers. Both Last.fm and eHarmony issued separate statements confirming that some user passwords may have been compromised in the recent hacker attack.